The Love That Lives
The Love That Lives


The first touch of your breath felt like the freshness of morning air after a night of rain,
Almost luminous in the gloominess of my heart!
It touched me like the sun’s first ray touches the infant buds,
Lighting them up, helping them glow.
It was tender and warm, like the rug beside my fireplace,
And it had a flame, crackling like the log of woods in a furnace, blazing yet calm.
Your breath today is the same when it touches me
Livid and calm,
Racing yet slow,
Warm yet cooling the insides of my burning soul.
Eve
r gentle, ever touching, everlasting
Is there a book of rules,
Granting the gift of poetry to only those who are slain by love?
Is there a doctrine, an edifice or a code,
That only allows sacramental love to dissolve in the world of poems?
The love that grows, the love that offers,
The love that lives and the love that lasts,
Made worthy of no praise like the burnt wood of the furnace that had crackled and lasted and offered and calmed.
The love that’s dead is dauntless and intoxicating,
But the love that lives is ardent and obscure!